Use Obsidian as a documentation repository for a Small Business?

[Mr.D]

Se we currently use, and hate Confluence for our documentation needs. Is slow. Probably take us 50% more time to document something, the diagram app its terrible, etc, etc…

Have tested a lot of wikis and documentations tools in the past, but nothing beats obsidian. Only problem is that its was never designed for a multiuser setup.

I think we can make it work, the idea basically its to make a shared Vault, and only put a couple of guys with editing permissions, and everyone else as readers.

• We have a server with Nextcloud & Syncthing. A lot of HDD space.
• Around 10 - 15 users
• Need to be able to Scan a QR and open the corresponding note in the Obsidian APP (We have tested this and it works with a local vault in Android)

Right now my ideas are:

1_ Syncthing Share

Probably the faster, and the most stable. Im running this combo in my personal vault for months. I also tested with a shared folder with other user, and it seems to work without issues.

• Fast and Stable

• The biggest problem its the mobile devices, the vault will have a lot of videos & images, right now not a big problem, probably around 3- 5gb, but what if we hit the 20 - 30gb mark?, that will make things interesting.
• Need to configure both Syncthing and Obsidian in all our terminals.

2_ Nextcloud Share

Similar to option 1, but with more options to give easy access to read / write to our users.

• More granular permissions, easy to assign users / folders

• More prone to sync errors, because of naming, or else.
• little slower
• Need to configure nextcloud & Obsidian in each terminal. Altough we already have nextcloud in all our workstations, would only need to add to the smartphones.

3_ Use a shared folder.

Use a SMD folder or simillar, and share it along the network. This would eliminate the worry of having a big vault in mobile devices. But im not sure how stable are the virtual network drives in Android, any experience on this?.

• No space limits*

• Need to install obsidian and a Folder explorer in Android.
• Need to configure users in SMB for editing & read.

4_ Obsidian Publish

Probably the easiest option. But the biggest disavantage its the 4gb limit. We would need to upload all our videos in nextcloud / youtube and share the link to obsidian. We might get into trouble with only the images, 4gb its too little!

• We can share links and open in any browser instead of the obsidian link (and opening them in the APP.)
• Dont need to install obsidian everywhere

• 4gb its too little for our needs.

5_ Other Publishing tools

I hear about other tools. If they have more space, or they could be selfhosted it would be probably our best option.

What do you think?, any experience trying this?

[New]

I agree that Obsidian Publish might be the easiest option. Maybe you can contact the Team directly and you can discuss it with them. If you use a business license they might be open to work with you and even help you set up such a thing. Them offering more then 4gb for a small fee should theoretically not be a problem with how cheep storage has become over the years.
Good luck!

[EvolvingRichie]

I use Publish for my small teams internal knowledge base and found it far too limited, because team members are not really able to contribute easily. I think the majority of knowledge bases need to allow all user to contribute for them to be scalable and well maintained. Having only a few team members able to contribute is a serious bottleneck to keeping it up to date. If its not up to date, or if a team member has to contact the editors everytime something is out of date, few people will do it. If its not well maintained, people lose trust in it and stop using it.

[New]

I can see your point. I guess you could give access to everyone, although I’m not sure if there are any limits as to how many people can edit the same vault and if there are any blocks to prevent 2 people editing the same note and causing sync issues.
But, at the same time I want to stress that having only a couple key people able to modify your database lowers the risk of any problems dramatically. My case may be a bit particular, but I use quite a few Plug-ins where some functionality is dependent on the other. I know how to work with it because I have built it up, but some random person would probably break something without prior instruction.